Chelsea Fan Corner: Pradyumna Tembhekar

The Covid-19 pandemic brought the world to a standstill. It was a crisis of unprecedented magnitude in the modern world and though we're still reeling in the aftermath of the global pandemic, we're glad to replace fear with hope and for that, we will remain eternally grateful to the heroes who were at the forefront of this battle.

In Chelsea Fan Corner's latest episode, we focus on one such unsung hero - Pradyumna Tembhekar, a medico who occupied the frontlines in India's battle against the coronavirus.

Pradyumna Tembhekar is a Chelsea fan through and through and reminisces upon choosing the Blues as his club when he was still in school in 2008. He says his friends were always divided between Manchester United and Chelsea but it was always clear to him which club he wanted to support.

However, he admits he only became obsessed with the beautiful game and the Stamford Bridge outfit following Chelsea's 3-1 win over Manchester United in the Premier League in the 2013-14 season when Samuel Eto'o scored a spectacular hat-trick at Stamford Bridge to beat the Red Devils rather comfortably.

Pradyumna says that after that day, he became fully obsessed with football and there has been no going back ever since. He proceeded to talk about how football made a difference in his career as well.

He combined everything he was passionate about, which stretched across football, cinematography, and the field of medicine, to make a documentary on a case study where he focused on an intellectually disabled patient. He did so with support from Chelsea TV and his love for the game blossomed even more from that point onwards.

Pradyumna gives Chelsea TV a lot of credit for bringing his passion for cinematography to the fore. Being a fan, he was familiar with editing videos but Chelsea TV helped him come up with new ideas to pull off in the setup he had at home.

Shortly after, his friend Shyam received a call from the Chief Manager of Operations at Mumbai FC and they wanted to know if Pradyumna would be willing to work for the club as part of the media. They offered him a contract the very next day and told him that they need him to lead the media for Mumbai FC.

Since then, life has been full of surprises for Pradyumna, who expressed his joy at meeting fellow Chelsea supporters and Bollywood superstar Abhishek Bachchan along the way.

In a turn of events, Pradyumna Tembhekar was called to the frontlines as a medico in the wake of the Covid-19 pandemic. He worked tirelessly, clocking in countless hours all the while donning his favorite Chelsea colors.

When the pandemic hit, he realized that his responsibilities as a medical professional had to supercede his passion for football and he dutifully went about collecting swabs and samples and also looking at patients who were fighting for their lives.

He risked his own family's well-being by trying to be there for others as he was constantly running the prospect of being exposed to the virus. Pradyumna's mother was subsequently hospitalized and she was in the ventilator for two days but he wasn't informed of it until later as he was working on the frontlines.

It was only after she came out of it that her son was told about how dangerous a situation it was. Looking back, Pradyumna reflects upon how he had only two shirts to wear during the time when his mother was admitted and they were the Chelsea home kit and the away one.

It's not something that he had planned on doing but something that happened naturally. But Pradyumna likes to believe that it was the club's colours that helped him gather the strength to fight the odds at both a personal and professional level during those testing times.

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